SUPPORT FROM PRIVATE PHILANTHROPY 



interest in the advancement of social theory and social philosophy; 

 it would be a practical interest in the welfare of individual men, 

 women and children together with a recognition that the knowl- 

 edge which the social sciences can give is an essential and at the 

 present time inadequately developed means for the achievement 

 of its purposes. 



The Rockefeller Foundation embarked on its program in 

 psychiatry with a statement emphasizing the number of hospital 

 beds devoted to mental illness and "the economic, moral, social, 

 and spiritual losses occasioned by the feeble-minded, the delin- 

 quents, the criminally insane, the emotionally unstable, the 

 psychopathic personalities. . . ." 



All this was true enough but it was perhaps insufficiently 

 noticed that there was not at that time the same backlog of 

 basic research in the social and psychological area that had 

 existed in the natural sciences. A tradition of pure disinterested 

 investigation was also much less clear and well established. 

 It seems particularly difficult For man to study his own behavior 

 without succumbing to the risky temptation to put his partial 

 knowledge to immediate practical use. Thus that great student 

 of human affairs, Niccolo Machiavelli, published his findings 

 not in objective scientific reports but as handbooks for the aid 

 of aspiring princes and courtiers. Nineteenth century economics 

 which got off to a reasonably detached start with Malthus, who 

 was among other things an Anglican curate, soon became in- 

 volved in practical politics. The next big name is that of 

 Ricardo whose papers on inflation and the Corn Laws led al- 

 most immediately to parliamentary discussion and action, 

 jevons, perhaps the most brilliant of the nineteenth century 

 theoreticians, was equally well known for practical papers on 

 the price of gold and the coal question. 



Psychology exhibits a similar tendency to hurrv its results 

 into practice as is clearly shown by the ratio of clinical and 



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